In certain instances, a person may be
unable to breathe on his or her own. The types of injuries that cause
a person to be unable to breathe unaided are varied and can be caused
by physical trauma or from an inhaled substance among others. In many
emergencies, there may no power or no compressed oxygen supplies
readily available to power a conventional ventilator.

In a
hospital setting there are two types of ventilators available today.
Some of the machines are powered by electricity and the electric
power to force air in and out of the lungs. Pneumatic ventilators are
older technology that require no electricity and get the force needed
to inflate the lungs from a compressed gas source typically in the
100-PSI range.

The problem with pneumatically powered
ventilators on the market today is that they need either a steady
supply of large oxygen or compressed air cylinders or they need to be
used in a facility that has compressed gas sources that are large and
built-in. This makes the typical pneumatic ventilator difficult to
use in the field in a setting where compressed gas tanks are not
available.

Doctors in the UK have developed a new
type of pneumatic ventilator that is low cost and designed
specifically for use in emergency, rural, and military settings. The
new design can be built for as little as £200 and needs only 2-4 bar
of oxygen pressure to operate. Two bar is roughly 30 psi making the
new ventilator much less pressure to operate than conventional
designs. Even more important is the fact that the machine needs only
one liter per minute of oxygen flow to operate.

"Our
research has demonstrated that it is possible to make a gas-efficient
ventilator costing less than £200, for use where 2-4 bar oxygen is
available, with no pressurized air or electrical requirements,"
says consultant anesthesiologist
Dr. John Dingley from Morriston Hospital, Swansea. "Such a
device could be mass-produced for crises where there is an
overwhelming demand for mechanical ventilation and a limited oxygen
supply."

The doctors were able to use the new ventilator
design to inflate a mechanical test lung and demonstrated that the
design could ventilate patients that were unable to breathe on their
own. The design also needs no electricity. The typical electric
microprocessor controlled ventilator costs thousands of dollars; the
new design is so cheap that the doctors envision hospitals and
emergency organizations stockpiling the cheap ventilators as one time
use machines for emergencies.

"If you look at the last five years, if you look at what major innovations have occurred in computing technology, every single one of them came from AMD. Not a single innovation came from Intel." -- AMD CEO Hector Ruiz in 2007